What The US Open Tournament Means To Your Game…

April 18th, 2010 by articles

So you may be wandering exactly what does the US Open Golf Tournament have to do with my game? Well, if you want to play well under stress it should have everything to do with it. When you go to the driving range to work on your swing and pound ball after ball it’s only one small part of practise. This is what is called the practise makes perfect method. But if you have played golf for any length of time you know that it simply isn’t the truth; practise doesn’t make perfect! Perfect practise makes perfect. So really you should be practising what is essential for you to play at your best. Your inner game of golf requires equal awareness.

In order to play well with the anxiety of stress you need to practise under similar conditions. When it counts the most and you need to pull off a great shot the stress of the moment you have forced on yourself increases 10 fold for some golfers. The trial by fire approach to improving your mental game of golf toughness and performing under pressure is a haphazard method. Yet it’s the only method that most amateur golfers know.

By entering more competitions and tournaments they have the false impression that this is going to improve their mental game and concentration skills. It just doesn’t work that way. What do you see happen most of the time with this typical approach ? Most players don’t perform to their own potential in the key moments when everything is on the line because they lack the mental game training.

Inevitably when they fail it’s chalked up to experience and they simply hope to be in a position to win again. They call this approach the natural way. Just get in position as many times as possible and you’re bound to win. This is a very hit and miss mental game strategy. Well this might be true, since a player will succeed eventually if they give themselves enough chances.

I want to submit to you that the more times you are in contention and don’t win that what you are doing is increasing the likelihood of losing again, not of making winning easier. What the problem is; it’s a lack of mental game training. Because the negative associations that are stacked in your subconscious mind around not performing well under pressure. It will drive your behaviour (your thought processes and the swings you make under stress). You will instinctively duplicate the experience of losing that you are accustomed to.

It certainly is a hard pill to swallow but if you want real and lasting change then mental game training can save you months, and even years for some people , of pointless inner chaos around pressure, performance anxiety, competitive stress and its influence on your golf game. Now what if you could reconstruct the pressure of the US Open in your practice sessions and then go and play with this mindset?

Now let’s say you have a mental game visualization routine that is filled with every imaginable pressure situation you could encounter. Do you think you would be perhaps a step or two ahead of your average golfer with the “natural” approach? You most certainly would.

By feeling with your mind’s eye, not simply seeing, you can experience the exact pressure you’ll face in a tournament . Your unconscious mind will absorb these sessions and add them to your mental game library and integrate them into your golfing self image. These become real events to your mind. This technique provides the body and mind with sensory specific information of what pressure is and how you need to operate when it’s present.

This is in fact preparing your mind and body to perform in a desire manner when the anxiety of tournament play is present. Practise your mental game by imagining you are in the US Open and at the range hitting balls. Give yourself only one shot to hit your desired target. Create a scoring system to examine how well you perform this way. crank-up the pressure by taking only one drive, then one iron, then a chip shot if you miss your imagined green with your approach shot. Try to pay very close attention to how your perform when using this technique.

If you want to speed up your mental game progress and begin to play well under pressure then it’s vital you simulate pressure in your practice sessions . How else are you going to prepare for the inevitable? Do you honestly want to rely on the time worn routine of entering more and more tournaments and matches with the hopes of getting used to it? How much time money are you prepared to lose before you make the changes necessary ?

Take hold of your potential by developing a rock solid mental game. Your overall mindset on the course, your Mental Game of Golf toughness, your sense of clarity and inner confidence under the gun, and a list of other benefits will enter your game. Not just sporadically but for a lifetime. You will be amazed how the little things that used to distract you before no longer enter your mind.